By Neha Prakash
Zoran Maximuric in his home in Ardea. He and his family moved away from a Roman gypsy camp to escape violence but still relate strongly with the culture.
It began with a road trip.
In the time it took Bogdan Mohora, Francesca Trianni and I to rent a Fiat and make our way to the small city of Ardea on the outskirts of Rome, the three of us had exhausted the conversation of gypsy stereotypes.
“What even makes a gypsy a gypsy?” I asked.
My fellow reporters stood silent.
“What do they like to be called?” Bogdan questioned.
Over the days researching and speaking to people in Italy we had heard the gypsy community be referred to as “Rom,” “Roma,” “Zingari,” “Rom e ciniti” and nomads. We could not discern a derogative name from a linguistic expression.
None of us had similar upbringings. I was an Indian raised in a small Maryland town, Bogdan a Romanian raised in Washington and Francesca an Italian brought up in the northern region of Modena. We had crafted a broken puzzle on this group of people, based on small fragments of limited and divergent knowledge.
Francesca told us how the prejudice toward gypsies seeped into her subconscious in her upbringing in an Italian household. How she had heard the only reason gypsies moved from place to place was because they were hiding from the people they often stole from.
Bogdan’s many trips to Romania left him with the impression that gypsies only excel in accordion playing and manipulating steel.
And for me, my association with gypsies began and ended with the Disney movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Esmeralda, a tambourine-shaking, crafty gypsy in France.
Before our trip, the three of us had read about the gypsy community in Italy — mostly negative press. In Italian media, gypsies were reduced to a subculture of theft and thievery, often scapegoats for violent acts. Months before our visit, the story of an Italian girl who falsely accused a gypsy of raping her widely circulated in local papers. Residents of the girl’s town burned the gypsy camp to the ground soon after.
Bogdan Mohora navigates the streets of Rome on our road trip to Ardea to meet a gypsy family. | Photo by Neha Prakash.
It seemed the more research we did and questions we asked, the more lost we became in a world loosely defined according to stereotypes.
With these thoughts of skepticism, nervousness and racism in our head, we entered the home of Zoran Maximuric and were immediately shocked.
What we saw, and experienced, was the true feeling of home and family.
The modest one-bedroom abode, painted the color of tangerine sherbet, held a gypsy family, sprawling in size — it seemed a new daughter, son-in law or relative barged through the door each minute.
They immediately sat us down and showered us with conversation and treats. The rickety card table that served as their dining room table shook and heaved with the weight of the food. Coffee and wine, cookies and biscuits, as each tray emptied another was filled. Calling them boisterous is an understatement, calling them simply funny is an insult, and only calling them inviting is wrong.
We learned how Zoran has lived in Italy for 41 years (he is originally from Serbia) but was still never treated as an Italian citizen; how the family left the gypsy camp because some of the kids were getting involved with drugs and gangs; how they can never hold a job because of the racism of Italian employers, how women must be virgins upon marriage because they believe non-virgins can con a man out of his money.
But the information they told us was nothing in comparison to what we saw: The unyielding connection between the family members and their eagerness to share their life experiences without the pretenses of discrimination. They appreciated our lack of knowledge because they weren’t scared of judgment. The more time we spent, the closer our worlds became until suddenly I realized that one of the daughters was sporting a pair of shorts with “Yankees” splashed across the backside.
The most inspiring part was their resilience. For so long, their people have lived a borderless life and have been run out of homes and countries without reason. Nonetheless, Zoran’s family still stay true to their roots and heritage — they even read our coffee grinds to predict if Francesca and I would find husbands. (For the record the grinds were inconclusive… )
Before entering Zoran’s home, I was extremely nervous. Francesca shared her Italian language with the entire family and Bogdan could communicate with them in Romanian. I thought without a common language, the family wouldn’t be able to connect with me or feel open speaking through translation.
I was proved wrong. Zoran’s family took one look at me and smiled. They said I was one of them, and that we came from the same place. Confused, I asked Francesca to have them explain.
They said that gypsies originated from India, and because of that we shared blood and were family.
With that thought, I smiled and took a deep breath at the thought of finding family and a home away from home with the gypsies.
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